10 Minutes to 20

So I've spent the last few days cribbing about how I don't want to turn 20, and how TILL twenty it is like oh-you-know-there's-still-time, and how once you hit twenty it's the countdown begins to when you are a grown up.

I don't feel so different as of now. But yeah, it has been a bittersweet ride till here. Life has taught me a lot in its ways, big and small. A few minutes ago I had a surprise cake in my hair and now I am here getting all philosophical about it. So many memories, lessons and so many firsts.

So here's just saying cheers to life, cheers to leaning and cheers to living. Though I still don't feel as excited thinking that I have already lived and seen two decades (that makes me feel so OLD), but it is still a new day, with new people to meet, new places to go, new emotions to feel and a lot to learn. So 'the twenties' it is!

Also, I realize that I may be twenty, but I still think 1990 was just ten years ago. 

Almost-Midnight Musings

Tonight, I am in a mood, probably sleep deprivation and heavy headed-ness induced. Also, my A/C refuses to cool in this maddening heat (according to my phone, thirty eight degrees Celsius), so I am not going to rule out the neither hot neither cold environment around me as a catalyst to this mood of mine. 

It is just hard to even write when there are too many thoughts in your head but one refuses to take the train of thought completely.

Tonight, I am in the mood for dim yellow lights, solitude and some forgotten, soft, blues music blaring from the speakers. It is just one of those nights when I feel what I think Devdas must have felt with a bottle of alcohol, drunk out of his senses, his heart laid bare- but with probably less passion. And drunkenness. And more senses.

Okay. That comparison just lost its credibility.

There are those nights when you just want to brood to your oldest music, or probably think nothing at all. Tempted to unlock the treasure boxes you have buried deep in your memories and it comes naturally, and they are of view to you in a very unattached, disenchanted and fond manner; much like someone feeling empathy for the protagonist in an expressionist film with a lot of symbolism.

There is an urge to write down the songs that I am listening to, all of them; because right now, it feels like I can feel all the sentiments captured in those flowing, poetic lyrics inside me. They are fleeting, and none of them is too engrossing except maybe a sharp pang about something that comes to notice, like a childhood token that you find years later in some cluttered, dusty corner of your old cupboard- only, it is in the memory; or the longing for a moment where you wished that time would freeze. But this freeze-frame in my mind is all but one of the many, difference being just that it appears in a sharper focus than the rest.

My eyes burn as I write this, more because I am typing in dim light with the screen as illumination to my already tired eyes. Oh well. There is music that begins to play but I press forward to the next one soon after it starts. I wonder why. 

It is funny because I was just saying, and thinking I want to sleep but here I am. My mother would probably disapprove, but she cannot tell me so right now. So might as well go ahead and give it a conclusion, or some sense. Sometimes, I feel like randomness becomes the essence of my thoughts. The ideas of eternity have become tainted by a practicality and reality that the heart has seen and eyes now show. Childishness struggles with bitterness that threatens to creep into the crevices that have been trenched where there were once holes. 

There is one joke that I remember from my childhood, that I found ridiculously funny and would retell to anyone in any context of something funny. I see how the jokes have changed now, what black humor is and why it is funny, and I wish I could go back to the time when I did not know how black and humor could be used in one phrase. The world is turning a little more threatening every day- threatening to swallow you whole in your quest for your place in it. 

But then there are the bubbles that I like to blow, and the colors I like to see. The sky is always beautiful and the air is unstoppable. Diwali lights look so hopeful and there are still happy endings for lovers in films. The stars probably look pretty and countless to someone, somewhere in the countryside. My brother gives me the tightest hug me when he sees me. He is going to grow taller than me, I know it. 

Love makes the world go round, but love itself is not enough. Have the dynamics of the world not gotten it all wrong that way? Maybe someone WILL dig a hole through Earth and come out on the other side and tell us why. Then we will probably have the answers to everything that should be enough, but is not; everything that is deserved but is not given; and all the compassion that is right there but not showed. 

I remember a story from the Panchatantra where a silly hare scares the entire jungle saying that "the sky is falling!", when the piece of "sky" that actually awoke him from his slumber and sent him scurrying was actually an apple from a tree. That made sense, right? Well, since the skepticism of the world makes little sense right now, maybe the sky WILL fall. And then, we will know that there is more. 

On that note, I am raising my imaginary glass to much needed (at the same time, overactive) imagination and, to possibilities!

PS. My playlist ended as I finished writing the above line. Some things are falling into place after all!

The Joys of Re-Self Discovery

Recently I read an article titled "Bring Back The Magic" in a supplement of The Hindu, dated May 5th, 2013. It was beautiful and it spelled out some thing I had been wanting to do and actually. The article just streamlined for me a way to go about it.

It asks you to write a letter to yourself. To spell out the things that still matter to you, the things that still drive you and the things that still make you want to dream and work and try harder. Things about the world that make you angry and sad and things that you would want to change. Things like wanting to turn the world upside down because it tends to be a little too straight sometimes sometimes; and straighten it out a little bit because it twists the simplest of things.

Why would one write a letter to themselves? Because, with time, we tend to become skeptical versions of ourselves, giving up on things that we believe in because we have commitments and work and the survival is just a tiring lifetime of exercise. So to write things like these, is to give your future self some hope, to write these things now is saying to your future self who has seen too much reality, has become too bitter and is thinking, "what the hell happened to me?", that there's still hope. This is what you were, and this is what you are. You just have to choose to become.

And so, I want to write myself a letter. I want to write to myself about all the things that are important to me now, in case I ever forget. I want to preserve the my compassion, my love for color and my un-ladylike loud laughter in pen and paper, in my words, in my handwriting to remind myself how much I love a good pen and how I want to write and how I have a decent handwriting- in case I ever forget. I want to engrave (well, on paper if not in stone) how I love breaking my back doing little things on people's birthdays and making them smile; and how I don't need gifts and rewards but a simple appreciation or a hug suffices- in case I ever become more materialistic about those things. I want to write about how blowing bubbles still makes me happy, how much I miss home and how much I love dogs and how I respect life. How war makes me sad and politics is distasteful to me if I ever become to pompous about my opinions. I want to pen down how I want to grow old to be an open minded person who grows more approachable with age and not, high headed and cranky.

Most importantly, I want to write about how thankful I am for all the happiness and even the pain that life has given me and how much I have learnt from it. How much I love to love and how powerful the bonds of family are. I want to write about how, right now, I still have beliefs and ideals, to remind my future self if she ever falls victim to the harshness of this world and of life, and loses them the reasons she has to work for.

BUT, I have exams right now and I see it is going to be a long letter to myself so it will have to wait for about ten days or so.

But, on a concluding note, people talk about life insurance..but they completely miss the real point. So my dear future self, if you ever feel like you have lost (the purpose/ideals of your) life or that you're losing it, here is a little piece of life insurance, for you.

:)

Stay

Some time back, I was listening to a Taylor Swift song and said something along the lines of, "She can make good music but she just comes across as a grumpy, lovesick puppy. All her songs are about the same thing." Then recently, I realized something about myself- more often than not, most of the things that I write are influenced by one thing that matters to me above all else too- love. I don't mean the kind of love you share with your life partner, but all sorts of love. The love that you have for your mother, your brother, your dog, your friend, your lover; love in all its colours and shades, that comes with as much baggage as it does with beauty, love that we all crave for, the attachment that we revel in and hate, love with its intense, bright, rosy haze and with its dark, piercing, passionate pain.

With that, I came to realize one thing that is as stupid as it is amazing. We, as people and as humans, have ONE ability (among others, of course) that sets us apart; that is, the ability to over rule and overpower instinct. 'Always trust your instinct', it is said. But then sometimes, even though we know exactly how a situation is going to turn out, we choose to stay. Instinct tells you to leave, to survive, to look out for yourself. When we make a conscious decision to ignore that instinct and still see something through- THAT moment defines us. 

Having studied a powerful perspective of how we as humans are self-centred creatures and how that is the basis of the "system" that we live in, the relationships we build, the things we do- it is somehow heartening to think of the fact that we have a free agency of our own. Something above the "I, me, myself", something deep inside that speaks to our humanity, that tells us to stop and stay and for once look past ourselves. 

What unfolds after these moments are the experiences that transform our outlooks, that change our perspectives and that reinstate or shake our beliefs. "Live like everyday is your last", they say. A friend of mine told me, "That's why bucket lists become important when you are about to die." Once the peace with Inevitability is made, things become much easier and much harder. Easier, because it is not very far that you have to look for the things you have been wanting to change, the things that you have been wanting to do. Harder, because even though you give something all that you can, and with the knowledge of inevitability and the determination of still giving it all you can comes..hope.

You would think that you have done away with it. You know exactly how something will turn out and you have made peace with it. So you would expect that hope figures nowhere in the scenario, right? But nope. There are two things that will make you despair like nothing else will- hope and helplessness. You would think that the two are conflicting emotions- but since we as humans are as irrational in our actions and desires as we try to make ourselves believe we are rational in our heads- we are very much capable of feeling both at the same time. Hope creeps in, like smoke through a crack. Even a little bit is enough to taint the air.

What we see, then, is through a glass sheet that is clear as can be, through which we see exactly how it is going to end. But hope makes it seem like a kaleidoscope, where the images are vivid and open to interpretation. With these conflicts, emotions and contradictions, we as humans, choose to stay. We choose to stay for compassion, for what we believe in, for humanity. For we can be bigger than ourselves. For we the irrational hope that creeps in. For we are capable of being shaped by more than just what we want. For we are capable of accepting and going through with endings that are not happy.

We choose to stay for love.

    "It's in the eyes of the children

    As they leave for the very first time

   And it's in the heart of the soldier

   As he takes the bullet on the front line

   It's in the face of the mother

   As she takes the force of the blow

   And it's in the hands of the father

   As he works his fingers to the bone

   ...

   This is why we do it

   This is worth the pain

   This is why we fall down

   And get back up again

   This is where the heart lies

   This is from above

   Love is this, this is love"

- This=Love, The Script

Echoes

A train of thought...

How one thing leads to another, how one visual, one sound, one hazy memory, will remind you of something completely unrelated or something that is just remotely related... All happening within a span of a few moments.

It is all in your head.

"All of life is an act of letting go."
Sometimes a sense of loss is not all that comes with the loss. It does not just happen outside, materially; but it takes away with itself a part of you and taints the rest that is left. It leaves you numb and slightly delusional.

It will not hit you until one fine day, you train of thought is on a completely different tract and out of the blue, it is hit; hit so hard that it is completely derailed. Where it was headed for does not even matter, for now it is lying in pieces, fire burning it to ashes- fire that is unexplained and unexpected. It does not matter where the blow came from. The shards of that broken train cutting and pinching drown it all out. The fire is physically constricting. It feels like it is squeezing, compressing your lungs so you can not get enough air in.

You would scream, wouldn't you? But it is all inside your head. It is real, but it is all in your head. It never shows, apart from a contorted face and blinded eyes somewhere in a suffocating, lonely solitude.

Then, once you are past that, or used to that, when you are just beginning to want, to try to pick yourself up, you realize how tainted, how grey your world has become. How there are always echoes, misty shadows lurking here and there. They are in your dreams, in your consciousness, in the dark corners and even right in front of you. You attempt to suppress them, cut them out of your vision; only to realize, they have just become a part of you. All these tainted echoes are a part of your memory, of your every day life; incomplete and yet strangely colourful and hazy in their bursting flashes.

Your very identity will always be coloured by them. They come in all shades of sepia, bordering on grey. They sound familiar, with an unfamiliar high pitched or whispered quality. They seem far away, long gone, but they are always so tantalizingly close. Wispy and yet, vivid.

There is nothing wrong with you, and there is nothing wrong with the world. They are just monochromatic echoes that are splashed in bright colours. It is alright if they follow you around or appear out of nowhere. Everything is perfectly normal.

It is all in your head.

August 21- Just one of those days

Just one of those days when you feel like everything that happened today, has happened before. Maybe it has, on one of these days a while ago, Did it? One of those days, when the pattern and order of things is familiar, that just means something; and despite all the randomness, there feels a connection to the past and to the future which makes the present how it is. One of those days when I am just thinking about what this means, that this is too familiar to be coincidental, or if this means something at all.

One of those days when I am trying to write something small and inconsequential before the clock strikes midnight, marking the next day, just so I can preserve the feeling that has been there all of today. One of those days when there's nothing to express really, just a feeling of familiarity, of emptiness, of questions unanswered and of wishful thinking.

One of those days when I am just thinking about things past and the things that are to come. One of those days when I am thinking about today, wondering if all this thinking and brooding is just a waste of time, or does it actually mean something. Maybe it will mean something in the future.

There are times when I will or just do something or not do something, thinking that maybe, just maybe I will have a chance of retelling it in the future, maybe then it will have some value and it will actually make sense to someone. It is sort of like, setting up a fixed deposit in the bank. You won't be able to use the money but it will reap returns some time down the line.

But what if, say, the bank gets robbed? Or there's a change of plans and you have to withdraw that cash. Then all that was for nothing. So, what if doing all those things is some silly teenager-ish exercise? What if it is something that I will look back on in the future and laugh about? What if I had just spent that cash instead of saving it?

What if.

Two words that can probably drive you insane. Any which way, it's not like I can help it. Some you learn, some you grow, some you change, and some of you still stays. So I will continue to think and do these things and continue to wonder if they will mean something in the future. Will they mean something to me or to someone else? Maybe they won't, to anyone. I couldn't tell, no matter how hard I tried.

You know how they say that there are some parts of our life that are written in sand, and so they are washed away easily by the ocean, and there are parts written on stone, that we always remember, always carry with us and they stay for life? They may be people, memories, advice, lessons we learn..anything. Here's the thing- when you are writing these parts, or living them (or whatever), you don't know whether they will make it to the stone or if they are just part of the sand that the ocean washes away after a while. 'Cause even the part on the sand stays until the next wave, the only thing that is different is the time between the waves that wash it away.

So maybe, I will never really know my sand and stone until I become a part of the ocean itself. Time has the ability to distort and strengthen anything and everything. Yet, there are things that time has no effect upon. You can never tell which is which, unless there's a situation where you know that today is your last day and you can actually analyse every aspect of your life and that's when you can be like, "AHA! I have answers to every one of my life's questions now". Sadly, that doesn't happen.

This is such a random piece of writing. But it had to come out somewhere and somehow, 'cause maybe, just maybe this day will mean something. Maybe it has meant something. Maybe this is stone and maybe this sand. Maybe today would become the one day instead of being one more where I thought a lot and wrote things that didn't make sense. I don't know. I wouldn't know right now.

One day at a time, is all I can really do.

This is the first write up that's going to go up completely unedited, completely impromptu, completely honest. Just one of those days.

Irrationality

Logic and belief,
Sense and sensitivity,
Emotions and sensibility,
Options and choices,
Hard work and failure,
Odds and Success.

To be better than you,
Or to compete with myself?

Rationality
It is the the set order of things. It is what makes sense. It is to have a plan. It is what has been tried and tested. It is cliched and it's genius. It's the obvious thing to do. It has a reason to all questions questioning it. It is a calculated calculation. It is defined and definite.

Irrationality
It is unpredictability. It is what upsets the known pattern of things. It is the stupid thing to do. It doesn't have the answer to the question of "Why?" It is the unknown, the unsettling, the unsafe.

It is what boggles the mind. It is what forces you to think. It is what moves you to push against everything, no matter what the odds.

It is your gut feeling. It is "just knowing". It is making that split second decision. It is taking a chance when you know you haven't got any.

It is taking that dirt road and befriending a stranger. It is doing things on whim. It is going that extra mile. It is doubt and uncertainty.

It is to be in the moment. It is to go with the flow. It is to be careless. It is to be carefree. It is to let go.

It is waiting when you know that there's nothing to wait for. It is staying when you know there isn't a point. It is taking the fall even when there is no one holding a safety net.

It is the miracle where there wasn't any hope. It is believing a sweet lie when you know it isn't the truth. It is loving without limit and reason. It is hurting without complaint.

It is giving in to depths whose bottom you cannot see. It is feeling things that leave you numb, bursting, and breathless. It is to let yourself break, to be made again.

It is to be vulnerable. It is to be afraid.

Irrationality... It is to trust. It is to have faith. It is to believe. It is to venture into the unknown. It is not knowing. It is to do things that could go horribly wrong and turn out just right. It is to understand in silence and to communicate with eyes. It is to love and to forgive. It is opening yourself to feelings that can tear you apart. It is that feeling of "not feeling right". It is that feeling of "something's wrong".
It is to wait for the right moment and it is to be instinctive. It is to push yourself, and discover extremes you didn't know you had. It is that emotion that words can't explain and it is to give in to the passion that will leave you gasping!
It is everything unreasonable, everything beautiful, everything illogical, everything brave, everything that is a mistake and everything that is miraculous.

Irrationality.
It is everything natural. It is everything human.

OK, yes it's a mistake. I know it's a mistake, but there are certain things in life where you know it's a mistake but you don't really know it's a mistake because the only way to really know it's a mistake is to make the mistake and look back and say 'yep, that was a mistake.' So really, the bigger mistake would be to not make the mistake, because then you'd go your whole life not knowing if something is a mistake or not. And dammit, I've made no mistakes! I've done all of this; my life, my relationship, my career, mistake-free. Does any of this make sense to you?"

- Lily Erikson

How I Met Your Mother